She made no reply, for at the moment a strange voice, with a jagged Mexican accent and a thin insidious inflection, broke in upon them, and startled them all three.
“Nay, Monsieur le Duc,” it began, rolling the title as a morsel on the tongue. “Your Grace would deprive us of too much honor. Why, indeed, should mademoiselle not remain among us?”
Turning quickly, Jacqueline beheld the stranger’s black eyes upon herself. He, too, wished to know why she stayed in Mexico, but in his sharp, shifting look there was a penetration quite different from that of the guileless Michel. He bestrode a magnificent horse that seemed made for armor, 354whereas he himself would surely have been crushed under so much as a Crusader’s buckler. Being so very small, and perched so very high, he cut a ludicrously martial figure with his plumed hat and epaulettes and gold buttons and braid and medals and exquisitely mounted sabre. It was not a French uniform that he wore, but Mexican Imperial, and stupendously ornate. And within the brave array, he was such a little, little man!–insignificance glorified into caricature.
But the pigmy was not altogether on parade. He had that morning been receiving arsenals and fortresses from the French; in short, the keys of the Empire. For he was Commander in Chief of the Imperial armies, was this species of manikin. And ugly? He was a man of lifted upper lip under a bristling moustache, a man of fangs, a wee, snarling, strutting, odious creature of a man. A deep livid scar split his cheek and would not heal. Instead of arousing sympathy, it proclaimed him rather for the scratches he gave to others. For he was that Mexican of infamous name, the Leopard. Once he had looted the British Legation. Another time he massacred young medical students attending the wounded of both sides. There were stories of children speared and tossed in ditches. Yet certain priests blessed his ardor as defender of the Church. Maximilian had sent him on a mission to Palestine, since he was abhorrent to the moderates. But now he was back again, to lead the clerical armies. The valley of Mexico shrank from his brutal proclamation demanding submission. “Mexicans, you know me!” so ended the snarl. He gathered forced loans. He drafted peons, though they were exempt. He emptied the prisons, and convicts he sent in chains as recruits for the Imperial garrisons. In such a fashion Leonardo Marquez began his duties as generalísimo of the Empire.
“Your Excellency is most kind,” said Jacqueline, for no other reason than to annoy him by changing from French into his own language.
355“On the contrary,” returned Marquez, “I am flattered that you will be here to observe how we, alone, shall crush the rebels. Your countrymen, señorita, happily leave plenty of them. But I cannot believe that this is why you remain.”
“Make her tell you, then,” interposed the helpless Ney. He was utterly at sea. There was a trial of strength on between these two, but how or for what was quite beyond him.
Jacqueline pushed back the Persian shawl she wore–this fifth day of February was the Mexican springtime–and settled herself to the contest in earnest. “I fear,” she began slowly, “that my motive in staying can hardly be intelligible, unless, perhaps, Your Excellency knows why I came to Mexico in the first place. No señor, that blank smile of yours will not serve. Your Excellency cannot feign ignorance of public gossip.”
“Of course, I have heard that––”
“To be sure you have,” she returned dryly, “and you might add that I failed, since Maximilian has not yet abdicated. But Your Excellency is not one to imagine that the end can be long delayed.”